Her Heart In My Hand
by NeonZangetsu
Summary: If I tear open that chest of yours, will I see it there? If I smash open that skull of yours, will I see it there? Where will I see it, this heart of yours? If I cannot see it, then how can I find one of my own? How can I find a heart?  UlquiorraxOrihime


_To find the place where you belong...to seek knowledge and grow stronger with it...these things we all must have to be at peace with ourselves._

_~Inoue Orihime._

**_Heart_**

_Ridiculous._

He lay there in disbelief, bleeding from a deep gash that criss-crossed his torso. He lay there, wondering how this had happened. How he, an espada, had been defeated, by a hollowfied human. He lay there, staring up into that grim scarmask as the the monstrosity that had once been Kurosaki Ichigo, loomed over him. He lay there, wounded, and wondered, wondered where he had gone wrong, as his death swelled before him in the form of a massive _cero._

_It was ridiculous. _

Only moments before he had been dead. Only moments before, _he_ had pierced the boy's chest with a concentrated _cero oscuras,_ effectively ending his life and leaving him to plummet to the dome below. He'd destroyed the boy's heart. There could be no recovering from that. No, his doom had been certain, ever since their battle had began. Mask, or no mask, in the end he was still, just a human.

_Truly..._

His death had put an end to it.

_Utterly..._

Her saviour was dead. Her hopes had been dashed, her victory sundered. There was no one to save her now. No one left to come to her rescue, none strong enough to prevail against the strength of his resurreccion. Oh, the Quincy had fought, but he was trash. No, he was worse than trash. He was refuse. Not even fit to be called a warrior, incapabl of so much as putting a scratch in his _hierro._ With Kurosaki dead, there were none left to oppose him.

_Ridiculous._

That should, have put an end to it.

Only, it hadn't.

Unbidden, the woman had cried out for him. She had screamed his name, begged of his fallen corpsed; begged of him to help her. And, incredibly, the boy had responded. He, who had been dead, moved, his fingers scrabbling against the polished granite of the dome, struggling to find purpose. Reaitsu burst forth from his body as he stood woodenly not taking enough care. It swept over his form, over his face, scouring his skin clear of color until not a trace of his humanity remained.

Called back from the grave, Kurosaki Ichigo had risen.

And he had destroyed everything.

He had fought, with the single-mindedness of a maddened beast. One that knew naught but destruction. Sheer, utter destruction. His rampage had destroyed half of the dome of Las Noches, and, if that were not humiliating enough, he had shattered the _Lanza del Relampago_ with naught but his bare hands. His bare hands! He should not have beeen able to do such a thing, and yet he had, just as he had cut Ulquiorra down with ease.

_Ridiculous._

Truly, utterly, ridiculous.

Now, the human who was not a human at all, was about to end it.

And so he stared, resolute, into the eye of the storm as it swelled around him.

"Go ahead. I have no reason to live now that you've defeated me."

Truly, he had nothing left to live for.

"Do it."

The blast plunged into him with a sonorously low roar, and then...

Emptiness.

* * *

_(An unspecified amount of time later)_

It came as less a surprise, more a relief, when he finally awoke.

At first, anyway.

His first clue that he had returned from the land of nightmares came when darkness truly fell. The visions evaporated, and the voices went with them. For a very welcome period, there was nothing to see or hear, or even think. He could just rest, and be.

Then new noises began to intrude on the peaceful silence: the whirring of rustling cloth, low-pitched whispers and murmurrs from someone, a fizzing, spitting noise that could have been running water, and other sounds that had no place in his serenity. His heart rose at the sound of a respirator rising above the others. The faint sticking point between each cycle was horribly familair.

Someone_-who was it-_spoke:

"Taichou, he's regainning consciousness.

"Keep him sedated until I'm finished, Isane." Came the reply. "If he wakes up in the middle of the procedure...

For a moment there was only silence.

Then:

"Yes, ma'am." Was the answer.

Alarmed, he raged against invisible bonds to move limbs he couldn't feel. The babble of noises faded for a moment, then returned, this time with light and sensation accompanying it. A needle swelled before his vision, encompassing his entire existence in a single instant. Then the rest of the world swam dizzyingly into focus. He was strapped prone to a medical table in the middle of an operating theater. Multicolored tubes and wires ran from several places in his body to dark machines stationed around him, and stretching up to the high ceiling above.

A steady bleating that had to be his pulse spiked irrevocably; rocketing skyward with his heartbeat.

"Isane, the sedative." A voice like liquid commanded from somewhere beyond this terrifying vision. "Double the dose, please."

"H-Hai!"

Ulquiorra felt a sharp, pricking sensation in his neck. An eerie, icy calm washed over him, taking the terror away with it. He considered struggling, but truly, what was the point? He'd been captured. He'd failed his mission. That they had kept him, that they were keeping him alive, held little promise for the arrancar. Even, were he to escape-and he easily could, were he so inclined-what then?

"Sedative injected." The second voice swooned from somewhere above and all around him. "Hearbeat dropping...Vitals stabilizing... He's stabilized, Taichou." Momentarily, the pain in Ulquiorra's eyes dimmed. He struggled to speak, to struggle, to say something, anything, but the darkness took him in the form of those damned black crows and the pain threatened to obliterate his existence once more, piquing ever higher until...

There was only the blackness.

**0o0o0**

_(Later...)_

Ulquiorra awoke in a haze of pain. His eyes felt like they were on fire; every blink was like shards of glass through his retina. His chest ached so much that it took an act of will just to inhale. The air he inhaled was redolent of medicinal smells. He almost choked on the cloying odors, but just imagining how much coughing would hurt made his throat relax.

So he hadn't died, after all.

Whatever obscure scene he had found himself in, it had passed. He closed his eyes and released a small sob of relief, but refused to lower his guard all the same. The darkness had still yet to lift from his vision; because his eyes remained painfully scrunched shut. Whether a refusal on his part or simply his body coping with the trauma, he simply did not know. Nor could he bring himself to see a thing.

Eventually, his mind began to drift. How, he wondered.

How had he survived?

He remembered the numbness, the painful, agonizing descent into darkness as he slowly disintegrated. He remembered the descent; the falling. Sinking into the neverending abyss of blackness for what felt like an eternity, and without end. He remembered a flicker of light amidst the gloom, a beacon of hope towards which his fingers strained. He remembered it. He remembered reaching for it, grasping it, feeling its warmth envelop him and then...

...nothingness.

Eventually, his mind receded into unconciousness.

An unspecified amount of time later left his throat dry and his body reeling. Slowly, he came around, the sights and sounds of the world as he knew it proving too much for his slumber once more. He cracked open sleep-gummed eyes to see, to finally _see_ a hand resting lightly on the blanket over his sternum. Attached to the hand was a wrist, to the wrist, an arm and, as his gaze traced the length of said appendage, he found himself staring at a strange sight.

There, her head laid in his lap, her arms strewn about the sheets, slouched forward at his bedside, sound asleep, was Inoue Orihime. Something about the sight of her, in that condition stirred something in him; something he had not ever thought to feel before. It could not be called gratitude, for, while he was indeed alive, he had failed his mission; which meant his worth was reduced to less than nothing in the eyes of Lord Aizen. It could not be called anger either; because the sight of the woman's face, serene, peaceful, calm, could not invoke such an emotion from him, no matter how much he might wish it.

_Ulquiorra wished to move._

But moving would wake her. It would shatter the countenance of her visage and forever ruin the portrait of peacefulness laid before him. Strange though it might seem, he did not wish such a thing. And so instead he lay there, memorizing the features of her face in an attempt to pass the time, a time in which he breathed shallowly, careful as to not wake her from her slumber

"Uhn...

The arrancar stiffened, every fiber of his being tensing for battle when she inexplicably stirred atop him. It was an old reflex, drilled into him by his-former-master. The woman posed no threat to him, he knew this, truly. Even so, he suddenly longed for the green woven hilt of _Murcielago_, for the reassuring weight it provided, placed upon his hip once more; or better yet, secured firmly within his hands.

But it was gone.

He felt naked without his zanpakuto. It was almost as if someone had neatly cleaved him in two, then spirted away his other half. Such was what it felt like to be parted from his weapon, however briefly. Because there was no blade for Ulquiorra to grasp now. It was gone_-much like his reaitsu-_and there was naught for him to do but smolder silently as _she_ turned her head toward him, as _she_ regarding him with bleary, sleep-filled eyes.

"You're awake." She murmurred softly, her tongue loosened by sleep_-a lack thereof-_her eyes widening immediately thereafter as she caught her mistake. "Oh! You're awake!" Ulquiorra forced himself into a sitting position as she practically flung herself off of him, her eyes wide, her cheeks burning a deep, rosy scarlet. _Strange._ He didn't recall this strange coloration of the facial features in his initial observation of this woman and her kind.

"Why do you stare at me so, woman?" Ulquiorra asked, the thinnest venier of impatience worming its way into his words. "Do I frighten you?" Now it was his turn to pause, his eyes narrowing marginally in rememberance. It felt as if he had said them before. Yes, he had, hadn't he? He remembered now. _His resurreccion crumbling around him, as turned toward her, wondering why, even now, _why _she did not cringe away from him when he looked at her so._

_"Do I frighten you, woman?" His words, struggling to bridge the abyss between them as he reached for her._

_"I'm not afraid." Shaking her head, stretching out her fingers in turn..._

_"I see." The thinnest of smiles breaking across the plane of his lips and then-_

"I'm not afraid."

Ulquiorra blinked the memory away, alarmed by the intensity of the words. Just now, it was as if she had actually _spoken_ to him. Was his memory of that encounter truly that vivid that he could remember it in such detail? He could even feel her palm, pressed against his own. Odd, that he should remember this when his memories dicated otherwise but there could be no denying that, even now, he felt the warmth of human hands pressed against his cold, deadened flesh.

"I'm not afraid." The memory repeated, slower this time. Only then, did Ulquiorra realize that he was not reexperiencing some dread memory, some feeble inkling of what was nearly the last moment of his life. He turned his gaze downward, and blinked. Once, twice, three times. Strange. Why was this woman holding his hand? Did it perhaps signify, some manner of apology of some sort?

"Why?" He finds himself asking. "Why is it that you do not fear me, woman?"

"Because...

Her lips pursed, her face scrunching up in an effort to find whatever it was that she so desperately wanted to say.

_...because I just don't."_ she conceded softly, unable to supply him with a proper, logical scoffed. Such an illogical woman, this Inoue Orihime. It was no small wonder that Aizen-sama had taken an interest in her. She never cried for herself, only for others. She never cursed her captors, never fought them, never resisted when they beat her. Instead, she always smiled. Until now, it had always been a sad, lonely, little, smile, devoid of any true happiness.

Until now.

Now, when she smiled, it was a smile of such warmth and boundless joy that he could not help but wonder why he hadn't seen it before. Rather he had. He'd seen it in her eyes then, but it had been directed at him, her saviour, the one that had come to take her away, to take her away from Aizen, from Hueco Muendo, from him. Now, to see such a smile, to have such genuine intensity directed at him, Ulquiorra Schiffer, for the first time in his life, was stricken speechless.

She flashed him a sheepish smile as his eyes widened in what could have been the strongest showcasing of confusion he'd ever allowed. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. She pulled her fingers from his own, and yet still the warmth of her touch remained, as did his gaze. He continued to stare at his hand, recalling his last, sentient thought before it, before the blackness had taken him atop the dome of Las Noches.

And this time, Ulquiorra Schiffer permitted himself the tiniest of smiles.

"I see."

**A/N: DAW! Ulquiorra just doesn't understand humans very well now, does he? I just HAD to write this after watching Ulqi's death! It was so sad! He didn't deserve to go out like that! He just didn't! So, instead, he wakes up after the war with Aizen is ended, after Sosuke is sealed, to find his zanpakuto taken into custody, and himself a prisoner of the Soul Society, with the possibility of parole for *ahem* good behavior. But at least he is alive!**


End file.
